Conversations on Cinema E-Book

Julio Bressane

• Herausgeber: Luigi Pellegrini Editore
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Eleven conversations taken from as many issues of Fata Morgana. Eleven conversations which synthesize the project behind the journal which was born in spring 2006. At the time it was decided against having an editorial comment because of the conviction that if the journal was going to succeed it would speak for itself. However, the time has come to say a few words. A journal is first and foremost a collective gesture whose outline creates a field. The gesture made by Fata Morgana, which at the beginning was only an intuition and then it slowly developed, is the same one that makes cinema a place and an opportunity to think about contemporaneity. It is not simply about what happens around us; it is what emerges from within the events which gather around a concept: from the concept of Bíos (issue No. 0) to the concept of the Sacred (issue No. 10). In this perspective, cinema needs to be interpreted and understood as having its own un-specific specificity. It needs to be interpreted and understood in its principal form where it is capable of categorizing its un-specificity, in other words, its autonomous form where it can categorize its heteronomy. This means thinking about a concept starting from cinema, and thinking about cinema starting from the concept. Thus, cinema becomes a special place and an opportunity to think about the universality of the concept (as a marker of contemporaneity) and the concept becomes the perspective from which to conceive cinema. By avoiding the double edged sword of a sterile specificity or of a self serving un-specificity cinema becomes the quintessential way of thinking about modernity where autonomy of aesthetical form is affirmed in its heteronomy, and its individuation imposes itself as a dis-individuation.

Leseprobe

CONVERSATIONS ON CINEMA

Julio Bressane, Jean-Louis Comolli, Georges Didi-Huberman Roberto Esposito, Yervant Gianikian e Angela Ricci Lucchi Werner Herzog, Paolo Jedlowski,Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière Paul Schrader, Slavoj Žižek

Editor: Alessandro Canadè

Copy Editor and Translation: Simonetta De Rose

Fata Morgana. Four-Monthly Journal of Cinema and Visions

Editor in Chief: Roberto De Gaetano;Scientific Committee: Sandro Bernardi, Francesco Casetti, Antonio Costa, Giorgio Tinazzi;Management Committee: Marcello W. Bruno, Alessia Cervini, Daniele Dottorini, Bruno Roberti;Editorial Board: Alessandro Canadè (Managing Editor), Daniela Angelucci, Vincenza Costantino, Vincenzo Cuomo, Massimo Iiritano, Andrea Inzerillo, Antonella Moscati, Ivelise Perniola, Simona Previti, Antonio Somaini, Luca Venzi;Editorial Office Manager: Loredana Ciliberto;Translation: Simonetta De Rose;Graphic Design: Bruno La Vergata;Publisher: Pellegrini Editore;Website: http://fatamorgana.unical.it

All Rights Reserved

© 2013 Pellegrini Editore - Cosenza - Italy

ISBN: 978-88-6822-092-1

Via Camposano, 41 (ex via De Rada) - 87100 Cosenza

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Website: www.pellegrinieditore.it www.pellegrinilibri.it

E-mail: [email protected]

This publication is protected under copyright laws. Translation, reprint, reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission, even partial, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopying, microfiche, recording, or likewise) is strictly prohibited.

Index

Opening Horizons Over what Is DeniedA Conversation with Roberto Esposito

edited byRoberto De Gaetano, Daniele Dottorini, Bruno Roberti

Could it Be that Cinema Itself Is Contemporaneity?A Conversation with Jean-Luc Nancy

edited byBruno Roberti

Archives that SaveA Conversation withYervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi (starting with fragments of their work)

edited byDaniele Dottorini

Transparency that HidesA Conversation with Jean-Louis Comolli

edited byBruno Roberti

The Rhythm of ExperienceA Conversation with Paolo Jedlowski

edited byRoberto De Gaetano

The Limit as IntervalA Conversation with Julio Bressane

edited byAlessandro Canadè and Bruno Roberti

Being Exposed to NatureA Conversation with Werner Herzog

edited byDaniele Dottorini

The Curved Space of DesireA Conversation with Slavoj Žižek

edited byAlessia Cervini, Daniele Dottorini, Bruno Roberti

Temporality and Memory of the VisualA Conversation with Georges Didi-Huberman

edited byAlessia Cervini and Bruno Roberti

Reasons for DisagreementA Conversation with Jacques Rancière

edited byRoberto De Gaetano

An Anti-Cinema Is Neededto Express the SacredA Conversation with Paul Schrader

edited byAlessandro Canadè and Bruno Roberti

Eleven conversations taken from as many issues ofFata Morgana. Eleven conversations which synthesize the project behind the journal which was born in spring 2006. At the time it was decided against having an editorial comment because of the conviction that if the journal was going to succeed it would speak for itself. However, the time has come to say a few words. A journal is first and foremost a collectivegesturewhose outline creates afield. The gesture made byFata Morgana, which at the beginning was only an intuition and then it slowly developed, is the same one that makes cinema aplaceand anopportunityto think about contemporaneity. It is not simply about what happens around us; it is what emerges from within the events which gather around a concept: from the concept ofBíos(issue No. 0) to the concept of theSacred(issue No. 10). In this perspective, cinema needs to be interpreted and understood as having its ownun-specific specificity.It needs to be interpreted and understood in its principal form where it is capable of categorizing its un-specificity, in other words, its autonomous form where it can categorize its heteronomy. This means thinking about a concept starting from cinema, and thinking about cinema starting from the concept. Thus, cinema becomes a special place and an opportunity to think about the universality of the concept (as a marker of contemporaneity) and the concept becomes the perspective from which to conceive cinema. By avoiding the double edged sword of a sterile specificity or of a self serving un-specificity cinema becomes the quintessential way of thinking about modernity where autonomy of aesthetical form is affirmed in its heteronomy, and its individuation imposes itself as a dis-individuation.

The first consequence is to remove discourse from its sectorial specificity which tends to naturally accentuate its (presumed)autonomyof cinema, and also remove it from their generic un-specificity, which would place cinema under a total heteronomy. In order to do this, the gesture needs to establish a field. In this case the field is created between a concept and the images. A field capable of collecting with its centripetal force all the real or potential centrifugality of the discourses which traverse it. This is why we believe thatFata Morgana, even though it has collected contributions from philosophers, directors, sociologists, anthropologists and, naturally, scholars of cinema, has had the ability to contain, in the form of anopenunit, all the heterogeneity of these perspectives and discursive practices. This does not only happen within each issue, it happens over all the issues conceived as the bright stars (we hope) of a constellation. The conversations collected in this volume, which have each opened a single issue ofFata Morgana, are conversations on a theme and on cinema. However, in light of what has been said the difference is not that important; actually, the role of the journal is defined by their indistinguishability.

Roberto De Gaetano

Opening Horizons Over what Is DeniedA Conversation with Roberto Esposito

edited byRoberto De Gaetano, Daniele Dottorini, Bruno Roberti

“Fata Morgana”,Bíos, No. 0, 2006

How about starting with an introduction on the notion ofbíos. Why do you think this concept has become central to current debates and what is its centrality due to?

The notion ofbíosisin itself a very old Aristotelian notion. The culminating moment of the relationship betweenbíosand knowledge started at the beginning of the 19thcentury when biology was born. Later, in the 20thcentury, the connection between the theme of life and new forms of expression became more evident, particularly in political language. Today a strong bio-ethical component has emerged; some of the new terms being used are bio-law and bio-technology. Life, the notion of life and the experience of biological life now lie in the heart of knowledge and contemporary experience. Why did this happen? Why are we experiencing this phenomenon today? Because the great mediators – institutional, cultural, sectorial – which constituted the structure of modern knowledge and power such as law and political representation, have fallen; at first slowly then they came crashing down. When all this exploded, thanks to globalization and, therefore, the crisis of sovereign states and sovereign rights, politics and life, as it were, came into contact. The great modern mediators have lost ground, even with regard to technology which is another important theme.

The theme of your book,Bíos, may be categorized in relation to the concept of the cinematic apparatus as themachineof knowledge and power of the 20th century. You discuss how the category of immunity and its inversion towards autoimmunity are becoming extreme. The more life is protected the more this protection mechanism – immunity – becomes extreme; it capsizes. It becomesauto-immune. A relationship exists between the work of death and cinema. This notion was first highlighted by Bazin when he said that cinema is an apparatus which cannot film death. It was then summarized by Cocteau when he said that cinema is “The work of death twenty-four frames per second.” At the same time, cinema continues to be the apparatus that conserves life, preserves life, and somehow, makes the appearance of life immortal, and, at the same time,it makes a vampire out of it;it sucks life. Thus, it is an apparatus that preserves life and, at the same time, it destroys it. As I read the last two chapters, it occurred to me that the cinematic apparatus is analogous to a totalitarian system. I mean that it is an apparatus that saves life and at the same time it destroys it. I would like to know your opinion on this.

I am very interested in this theme even though I am not an expert on cinema and I was struck by what you said about the twenty-four frames per second. A few things come to mind. We could say, for example, that another apparatus which renders immortal and at the same time renders vampires is the museum, in the sense that it preserves, but, at the same time, it blocks, fixes, and immobilizes. Another thing we could say is that the internal eye of human beings is incapable of seeing death, and even less so its own death. It is a great philosophical theme; although humans, as Heidegger said, are